When Deloitte Access Economics gave us the results of their research on the impact of the Internet on the Australian economy, I turned directly to the section on “The Impact of the Internet on Businesses”. In the Google Enterprise team, we see every day that the Internet has transformed the way businesses operate. But I was curious to see the numbers around how it’s transforming how people work. I’d also heard the Australian Government’s goal of doubling the level of teleworking in the Australian economy by 2020 -- a call that was repeated this week atTelework Sydney by Minister Stephen Conroy. He said that the internet promises to transform “who is able to work, when you can work, where you can work and how you can work” -- with huge benefits to both employers and employees. This vision becomes a reality with the rollout of high speed broadband access to all Australians.According to the Deloitte Access Economics report “The Connected Continent,” more than 40% of businesses surveyed report that the internet has already impacted the ability of their staff to work remotely and enables flexible working arrangements.

This is a good solid number and not a surprise. But that still means that well over half of businesses may not be taking advantage of the combination of high speed broadband access and cloud-based applications that can make a big difference to how their teams work -- and live. If you want to give team members a day a week to work from home, you can still keep productivity high and hassle-free. You can sit down and collaborate on a document together easily, without the hassle of emailing attachments back and forth and forgetting who has the latest version. With Google Docs, you can see your teammate making changes right on the screen -- the words are literally appearing and changing before your eyes. Internet-based applications are also making the smartphones and tablets that many of us have much more useful; you can easily get to your mail, documents, and calendar even when you’re not at your desk.And then there’s the fact that it’s hard to convince Aussies to move cities. If your dream employee lives in Melbourne and you can’t convince them to move to Sydney, you now have a lot more effective (and cost-effective) tools that make it easy to build team bonds across distance. Video technology keeps getting easier to use, so remote employees don’t have to miss the team bonding. We’ve built video chat right into Gmail so it’s always easily at hand. At Google we hop on and off video chats all day -- even with people in the same office -- to get that extra connection of face to face conversation.At Google, we’re going to keep making our tools for team collaboration even better. And as high speed broadband access becomes a reality across more of Australia, these new ways of working are going to become the norm, not a nice to have. Are you ready to embrace this new way of working?Posted by Stuart McLean, Enterprise Sales Lead, Australia and New Zealand